[Jim_Curtis]

I appreciate your intelligent response but the problem with all of the "to that, there's this"...it leaves one unfulfilled...like evolution with no consideration of catalyst.

[bobhoskins]

I appreciate your intelligent response but the problem with all of the "to that, there's this"...it leaves one unfulfilled...like evolution with no consideration of catalyst.

And it has to, as we really don't know what the catalyst is, although there are several theories.

The theory of evolution could certainly be effected by certain theories of how everything began gaining ground ... if a strong theory comes up that we're all a computer program, the theory of evolution would have to take that into consideration. However, if everything in the computer program acted, respinded, and appeared as if changes in mateable animals over time were allowed to propagate in offspring or not due to environmental conditions (oversimplification alert!), then the theory of evolution might still be valid with little change ...

I don't need to know how a gun got in a room to determine if it was the gun used to shoot the body lying on the floor next to it.

Certainly, there would be questions as to how the gun got there, if the shooting was intentional, if someone planned the death, etc., but for the purposes of the little bit of the puzzle TOE tries to understand, it's just like trying to figure out if this gun shot this person.